Sunday, July 23, 2006

Listen to the first part of this podcast to hear an interview with the brother of Ted Kaczynski, the unabomber. David Kaczynski (who, despite his love for his brother, suspected he was the unabomber and notified authorities) talks about telling their mother. He said he had a moment of fear - what if she didn't love him any more after the news. Her response is one that will bring tears to your eyes. Other interesting interviews by David Freudberg.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

She quotes from The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk.

Note that this book was written before Hezbollah kidnapped soldiers -- before Hamas became the government of Palestine.

"The same skewed semantics were applied to the July 1993 Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon. In revenge for the killing of nine Israeli soldiers inside its occupation zone in Lebanon, Israel attacked the villages of southern Lebanon, killing more than 100 men, women and children -- and putting 300,000 refugees on the road to Beirut...And President Clinton's reaction? He blamed the Hizballah -- which killed the nine Israeli soldiers -- for all the deaths, then called on 'all sides' to exercise 'restraint'."

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Trauma has complex and life-destroying consequences. If you've never been involved in something like that there's a tendency to brush it off and think severely traumatized people can simply get on with their lives, but this is ignorant and wishful thinking, as trauma shatters the self in ways that are hard to imagine. An excellent exploration of this is the well-known Trauma and Recovery: From Domestic Abuse To Political Terror by Judith Herman (Powells).

We hear of soldiers returning from Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress, but many women have the added problem of sexual abuse, assault, and rape. Sexual assault is more than a physical crime, but reaches right into a person and violates the person from within. This is not a few isolated incidents, as explained here, here, and here. If a soldier has more fear of their own than of the "enemy" there is no safety, anywhere for them - not in the barracks, not in the toilet, not even in their own heads.

Support for Suzanne Swift is incredibly important. She was jailed for going AWOL after her repeated attempts to get someone to do something about her ongoing sexual assault was ignored - she was essentially hunted by a predator, and displayed great courage trying to save herself. You can hear her mother tell the extremely moving tale on Democracy Now.